The PlayFinder™

THE STORY: In this curtain raiser, set in 1937, Bertha is a “BINDLE STIFF,” or hobo. She has come into the theater in search of someone she calls “Perfessor” (an empty chair in the audience). The Perfessor, a social scientist, hired her for his social research on the lives and habits of hobos. First, Bertha was to relate her own life story: from her childhood in Kansas, to a socialist farm during World War I, to being a prostitute. But recently the Perfessor has asked her to go back on the road and the rails to gather more information for his book. After three more trips out, however, Bertha is feeling used. She’s here to tell the Perfessor she has decided to quit and go back to the life she knows. (1 woman.)

In MICKEY’S TEETH, Steven, a former Mouseketeer, is drinking spiked coffee in a coffee shop in Riverside, California, brooding over his failures as a salesman. Being a Mouseketeer has opened some doors, it has also proved to be a detriment. As Steven says, “when it comes to closing, they just won’t hand an ex-Mouse a four-figure check.” He is waiting in the coffee shop to meet another former Mouse, but when Leah arrives, wearing her mouse ears, he does not recognize her. After questioning her, Steven determines that she was not a true Mouse, but a girl who lived on a farm in Nebraska that two of the Mouseketeers visited as part of several episodes. The show, however, had tragic consequences for Leah’s life, resulting in the deaths of her entire family, and now, embittered, Leah has become a “Mouseketerrorist.” She claims to have a bomb and is ready to kill them both. Only the timely arrival of the Blue Fairy saves Steven’s life, and furthermore, she gives him the opportunity to exchange his past life for a new one. (1 man, 2 women.)